Merck’s Sales Soar on Measles Vaccine After Disney Outbreak

Bloomberg announced this week that Merck’s MMR vaccine sales more than quadruped after the California Disney measles outbreak. Of course, there is no single measles vaccine currently on the market, and one has to purchase the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine which is a 3 in 1 combo vaccine. Merck has been involved in a long federal lawsuit with allegations of fraud over the mumps portion of the MMR vaccine, in a case filed back in 2010 by two whistleblowers, virologists who worked for Merck. There is also evidence that the MMR vaccine is killing more people than the measles virus, as there have been no deaths associated with measles according to the CDC, while there have been 108 deaths reported after the measles vaccine in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). In addition, reports show that between 50% and 86% of those who came down with measles in the Disney outbreak were actually already vaccinated. None of that matters to Merck, obviously, as sales of the measles vaccine grew by over 24% during the first quarter of 2015.